January Fools: Part II - The November 6, 2020 Election

  

NOTE: Throughout this post, we will insert pictures of Trump (as seen below) every time you are required, if you believe in the fairy tale, to accept a ridiculously unbelievable statement, swallow an absurdity as fact, overlook an outright lie, or ignore common sense. In honor of his bone spurs, we shall use this symbol, a picture of a younger, less blubbery Trump leaping in the air on one of his golf courses.  

PART II – THE NOVEMBER ELECTION.

 

11/3/20 (Predawn Hours): The blogger can’t sleep. Worried. Trump might be reelected. Awful. 

If you prefer Joe Biden, take heart. Several states and districts which were “battlegrounds” in 2016 appear out of reach for Trump now. Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Maine 1 are examples.

 

Also take heart knowing that almost a hundred million Americans have already cast ballots. Until a week ago, Biden had an eight-point lead, nationally, in an average of all polls. This morning that lead has shrunk to 6.7 points, but with Democrats also holding a 6.8 point lead in the generic ballot (which party do voters hope will control the next Congress). In other words, there appears to be no evidence that a great “red wave” is coming, as the president predicts.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: Final results show Biden winning by 4.4 points, 51.3% to 46.9%. Once again, the polls were generally accurate.

 

*

 

(Election Night): No more polling required! Americans trudge to the polls, or the mailbox, as it were.

 

Turnout is reportedly huge.

 

Much to this blogger’s surprise, watching early returns, it appears that Trump might win another term. First, he takes Florida with relative ease, the victory not unexpected, but the margin a shock. Ohio also goes for Trump by an eight-point margin, which makes this Ohioan sad.

 

Even worse, Trump rolls up a big lead in Pennsylvania.

 

(Sound of blogger gagging.)

 

I stay up till 1:30 a.m. looking for signs of hope. Then I turn in, but sleep fitfully for three hours. At 4:30 a.m. I wake and start checking my phone.

The blogger can't believe what's happening.

___

 

 

11/4/20: Just after 2 a.m., President Trump declares victory, and insists counting of the ballots should end. 

 

I rise again early, and watch all day as more and more returns pour in. The trends in almost all the battleground states are running light or dark blue. It seems clear our side has a real chance to win. I knew, for example, because, unlike the president, I stay informed, that in Pennsylvania at least a million more Democrats voted by mail than Republicans.

 

That meant, while Trump had a lead of 700,000 in the Keystone State, that as ballots were opened and tallied, his lead might evaporate.

 

(I also knew that Pennsylvania law required mail-in ballots to be counted last.)

 

Late returns from Milwaukee pushed Biden into a lead in Wisconsin. The “red mirage” faded in Michigan. Trump voters had showed up at the polls in person and their votes had been counted first. Now, as blue mail-in votes were recorded, the “mirage” of a Trump win in Michigan died.

 

Biden also built a lead in Arizona – and Fox News called the state for Biden. President Trump was livid.

 

I was worried the call had come too soon; but I knew we’d keep counting the votes until we found out if Fox was right.

 

Texas remained red. Nevada was trending blue again. And Georgia? Georgia was the palest pink when the day started. Those who studied voting numbers pointed out that almost all remaining votes were going to be reported out of the heavily-populated blue areas in and around Atlanta.

 

When I went to bed on November 4, I was no longer depressed. I was fairly sure we had votes to win.

The blogger has a firm grasp on the numbers.

 

P.S. Many heavily Democratic areas tally votes last because they’re heavily populated areas, and counts must be checked and rechecked. Fulton County in Georgia, for example, will have more than half-a-million votes to count. Turner County, in the very same state, will have only 3,700.

 

Greeley County, Kansas, polled a total of 627 votes for president in 2020. I’ve bicycled through that county. I know what it’s like.

One person in this county could easily count all the votes.

___

 

 

11/5/20: My wife and I spend the day watching vote totals change. In Pennsylvania, something like 500,000 mail-in ballots remain to process. Trump’s fat lead has shriveled to 136,000. If Democrats continue to rack up huge margins in mail votes (since we were told to vote by mail and not risk catching COVID-19), Biden has an excellent chance of wiping out Trump’s lead.

 

Nevada is still reporting only 75% of the vote. Trump trails by 8,000. So: he could still win that state. 

And here’s a final oddity – a Trump scam, if you will – for his fans to ponder. Right now, Team Trump is insisting that vote counting in Pennsylvania (where he leads) come to a halt. 

In Arizona, where Biden leads by 68,000, the president is demanding that the tallying continue to the bitter end. 

 

I head for bed Thursday feeling good. Georgia is teetering. There’s a chance it may turn pale blue.

___ 

 

11/6/20: I woke up very early this morning to news that the State of Georgia had gone blue, at least for now. 

Joe Biden had a 3,500-vote lead. The president’s chances of being reelected were slipping away. 

As the hours passed, it was clear that the President of the United States was losing the last marbles he possessed. He stalked to the podium in the White House press room and insisted that the election was being stolen, because state election officials kept counting all the votes they received. In Pennsylvania, what had been a large Trump lead, built on votes from those who showed up in person, began to disappear as several million mail-in ballots were tallied. 

In Arizona and Nevada, where Trump trailed, Republicans insisted that only communists would try to stop the counting before every vote could be tallied. 

In Arizona, as more votes are counted, Biden’s lead is sliced in half. It looks like Trump might win. So, we need to count the votes. 

Nevada, too, might slip from Biden’s grasp.

 

Meanwhile, as hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots are tallied, Trump’s once impressive lead in Pennsylvania vanishes. Biden moves ahead. This has nothing to do with “fraud” and everything to do with the fact Democratic leaders had urged supporters to get ballots in early, by mail. 

Money in the electoral bank. 

Indeed, if you had tried your best to be informed, you would have known this was coming. On October 12, it was reported that Pennsylvania had received 2.6 million mail-in ballot requests. That figure included 1,794,448 Democrats but only 693,670 Republicans, the rest independents. 

It was clear then, that Republicans might have a lead when in-person votes were counted. It would have to be huge. 

  1,794,448

–   693,670

         ???          Potential Democratic gain in mail-in voting         

 

This math problem was much too hard for the president, or Lou Dobbs, or Sean Hannity, or all three combined, to figure out. 

So, as the president’s lead shrank and then disappeared, he and they squealed like punctured porkers. 

Pennsylvania’s Republican senator, Pat Toomey, chastised the president for making wild, unsubstantiated claims of fraud. 

By Friday night, additional counting showed Biden with a lead in Georgia that had grown to more than 4,000. In Nevada, Biden’s lead had also grown. In Arizona it continued to trickle away. The biggest prize, Pennsylvania, was getting away from Mr. Trump. Biden’s lead passed 20,000. Even in counties where the same-day vote had given Trump 2-1 leads, mail-in ballots were running in favor of Mr. Biden. 

Once it became clear that Biden was going to end the day with a slender lead in Georgia, Trump supporters who had been shouting that it was past time to stop the count, suddenly started shouting anew. “Let the counting go forward!” they cried. 

Several thousand ballots from U.S. military men and women overseas were still coming in. I knew military votes tended to run red, so I knew, because I’m not a fool like Mr. Trump, that he could still carry the Peach State. 

___ 

 

11/7/20: You know what they say, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” So true, for President Trump.

 

As votes pile up, Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania grows. The trend is clear. He’s going to gain the state’s twenty electoral votes and send Trump packing after one tumultuous term.

 

TRUMP CARRIED OFF BY EAGLE…

 

Symbolically, Trump happens to be golfing – symbolically, again, at one of his private courses – at the moment Fox News, CNN, the Associated Press, and other news services declare Mr. Biden, “President-Elect.” (The BBC does have film of the president playing golf again.)

 

Back at the White House after his round of golf, the president tweets in all-CAPS, red-hot fury:

 

THE OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED INTO THE COUNTING ROOMS. I WON THE ELECTION, GOT 71,000,000 LEGAL VOTES. BAD THINGS HAPPENED WHICH OUR OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE. NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WERE SENT TO PEOPLE WHO NEVER ASKED FOR THEM!

 

If Arizona remains blue, let’s give it up for the Navajo Nation. In three counties that overlap their lands, the Navajo people gave Joe Biden 73,954 votes.

 

Trump got 2,010.

 

Biden’s lead in the state when I last checked: less than 20,000.

July 18, 2018: Russians to the Right, Russians to the Left, Russians Dead Ahead, Sh*tloads of Russians!

 

7/18/18: Who’s sweating profusely today when it comes to the Russia investigation? If you’ve been busy shampooing the dog, several shoes dropped this week. On Friday Special Counsel Robert Mueller dropped combat boots on a dozen Russian military officers charged with influencing the election in 2016. 

____________________ 

“I don’t think you’d need the sanctions.” 

Candidate Trump

____________________ 

 

The White House immediately released a statement saying: Hey, no Americans were indicted for collusion with said Russians! But the White House knew plenty and Trump and his team were praying that Americans heading for the beach or the pool would be too busy slathering on sunscreen to take note. According to the indictment at least one unnamed Trump associate had a series of contacts with Guccifer 2.0, now conclusively shown to be a Russian front. Roger Stone has admitted that unnamed Trump associate is “probably” him. (See: 6/17/18.) 

Ms. Butina.

What other shoes dropped? On Sunday, the F.B.I. arrested Maria Butina, a young Russian. She was charged with working as an unregistered foreign agent, one step removed from an espionage charge. For at least three years Butina is alleged to have acted on U.S. soil in the interests of the Russian Federation. Purportedly a gun-rights activist back home, she wormed her way into the graces of the N.R.A. It may have helped that according to court records she was willing to trade sex in return for access. We know the N.R.A. paid her way to this country more than once so she could speak on gun rights. Her public stance was in favor of private ownership of guns by Russian citizens. 

Butina also went to the trouble to speak on at least one American campus and called Putin “a dictator and a tyrant.” 

That at least was true.

 

Strangely enough, her criticism never led to arrest whenever she returned home. We now know that she rubbed shoulders with a variety of top Republican movers and shakers. She also rubbed other body parts. In one photo, the attractive redhead from Siberia stands smiling next to Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin. In another, she looks fetching in pearls, with N.R.A. president Wayne LaPierre gaping by her side. 

In July 2015 she was in the audience at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas. By chance or design she was called on to ask then-candidate-Trump a question. What would his position toward Russia be, she asked, if he were elected? 

Would the sanctions be lifted? 

“I know Putin, and I’ll tell you what, we get along with Putin…I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin, OK?” Trump told her. “And I mean, where we have the strength. I don’t think you’d need the sanctions. I think we would get along very, very well.” 

In August she was back home when Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, was visiting. The congressman says he can’t remember much about the young lady. Yes, Butina did arrange a breakfast with Alexander Torshin, but all he, your good old congressman, had was tea and toast. 

Because…you know…the waistline. 

No, seriously, Rohrabacher said the breakfast was of “no consequence,” which is probably a good way to cover your ass, if you broke bread with a Russian spy and her Russian spy master.

 

If you do a little digging, you understand why Rohrabacher might be feeling the heat. He is said to have met in early 2016 with Natalia Veselnitskaya. She’s the Russian lawyer who took part in the Trump Tower meeting that June, a meeting which is of key interest to Mueller’s team. (See: 7/13/18.) 

Well, now, what did Rep. Rohrabacher think about the indictment of Maria, this poor little girl! “It’s ridiculous. It’s stupid,” he fumed. “She’s the assistant of some guy who is the head of the bank and is a member of their Parliament. That’s what we call a spy? That shows you how bogus this whole thing [the Mueller investigation] is.” 

Actually, that “some guy who is the head of the bank” is a seriously shady character. Torshin is one of 24 individuals and 14 Russian companies sanctioned by the Treasury Department in May. 

They ended up on that list because they were individuals and entities that had benefitted “from [ties with] the Putin regime and play a key role in advancing Russia’s malign activities.” 

So, yes, Mr. Rohrabacher – we’re talking malign Russian activities. And you’re just slinging the bull.

 

Who exactly will be squashed by all the falling shoes we cannot yet know. Several Americans would be wise to scurry for cover. We know Torshin is an ally of Putin. This latest indictment (not directly tied to the Mueller investigation, but of obvious interest) makes clear that Torshin was giving Butina orders. Both became life members of the N.R.A., which even the head of the N.R.A. would admit is not a great look. 

Rohrabacher may be in trouble. Some say he’s the congressman in Paragraph 43 of the latest Mueller indictment. (See: 7/13/18.) 

Longtime Republican fixer, Paul Erickson, is likely to get whacked with a size-22 shoe. For some reason he formed a company with Butina in South Dakota in 2016. That company is the subject of a fraud investigation. Erickson is not named in the indictment but is thought to be the unnamed political operative with whom she was said to be coordinating activities. Erickson, almost twice her age, and Butina were shacking up and Erickson had been helping her do homework while she studied (under a student visa gained by lying on her application) at American University. 

 

“Everything has to be quiet and careful.” 

From the official indictment, we know Torshin was telling Butina to play the long game during the 2016 campaign. He advised her “not [to] burn out prematurely.” She admitted she was tired of living with Erickson. (She was also tired of offering to have sex with other men high up in conservative ranks in order to gain political access.) She responded via Twitter: “Only incognito!” That is, she was operating in secret. “Right now everything has to be quiet and careful.” 

“In the F.B.I. affidavit,” The New York Times reports, Ms. Butina assured some unnamed person, likely Erickson, “that the Kremlin had approved her efforts [emphasis added] to connect members of the Trump team with allies or associates of Vladimir Putin. ‘All that we needed was “yes” from Putin’s side.’” 

Later she wrote again to her American contact, “My dearest president [Putin, not Trump] has received ‘the message’ about your group initiatives.”

 

That exchange came in March 2016. So, you can understand why the F.B.I. might have been suspicious. We now know Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos met with what he thought were Russian agents offering dirt on Hillary Clinton that same month. Later he lied about it. 

Stone met his Russian in May. Eventually, he denied meeting with any Russians in testimony before Congress. 

Torshin tried to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin that month. 

In June 2016, Paul Manafort, Don Jr. and Jared Kushner took a secret meeting with individuals they knew were Russian agents. 

We know Torshin scored a short meeting with Don Jr. at an N.R.A. convention in May 2016. We know Butina and Torshin attended President Trump’s inauguration. In February 2017, she and Torshin organized a delegation of a dozen Russians to attend the National Prayer Breakfast and hear the Putin Pal President speak. Torshin scored a meeting at the White House later that year. At the last minute, his meeting with Trump was canceled when a White House security aide noticed that Torshin was under investigation for money laundering in Spain.

 

* 

ON MONDAY, Mueller’s team swatted a big cockroach with a wingtip. Mueller asked a judge for immunity for up to five witnesses to testify in the coming trial of former Trump campaign manager Manafort. That means there are five people who may be compelled to give testimony as witnesses. They are to be granted “use immunity,” which means nothing they say can be used against them. 

They will not be able to plead the Fifth. 

Is it still possible that President Trump will be absolved of all crimes during his campaign? I taught history for decades. I go only with facts I think are proven. He could be innocent. He could be nothing more than a poor dupe. I can’t deny, however, that I think a Nike Mag 2016 basketball shoe (cost: $26,000) may be hovering over his orange, hair-spray-helmeted head.

 

*

____________________ 

“I do not believe special counsel Mueller is on a witch hunt. I think it’s a professional investigation conducted by a man that I’ve known to be a straight shooter.” 

F.B.I. Director Wray

____________________ 

 

F.B.I. DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER WRAY sits down in front of an audience at the Aspen Security Conference in Colorado. He’ll be taking questions from moderator Lester Holt of NBC. For the third time, over the course of more than a year, including this past May and in June 2017, Wray makes it clear he does not believe the Russia investigation is a witch hunt. 

In the wake of the president’s recent statements in Helsinki, that he believes Putin, then he doesn’t, then he kind of does, you sense exasperation and a real hint of doubt about the innocence of the president in Director Wray’s response. “I do not believe special counsel Mueller is on a witch hunt. I think it’s a professional investigation conducted by a man that I’ve known to be a straight shooter.” 

Remember now. Wray was Trump’s pick to head the F.B.I. He just backed up Mueller 100 percent. 

Holt wonders: “There have also been stories that you threatened to resign. Have you ever hit a point on that issue of sources and methods or anything else when you said, this is a line?” 

Wray replies, “I’m a low-key, understated guy, but that should not be mistaken for what my spine is made out of. I’ll just leave it at that.” 

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (8/22/19): Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, resigns from the company and admits having an on-and-off sexual relationship with Ms. Butina for three years. This was at the same time Ms. Butina was living with longtime Republican fixer Paul Erickson. 

Byrne says he only did it for the sake of the country. That was the only reason he had sex with the young redhead. He sacrificed patriotic semen for us all. 

Byrne told an interviewer on Fox Business News, where no story is too stupid to fly, that the F.B.I. encouraged him to boink the babe. 

It was part of a “soft coup” (no pun intended) to undermine Donald J. Trump! “There is a Deep State, like a submarine, lurking just beneath the waves at periscope depth, watching our shipping lanes,” he claimed. “And a nuclear icebreaker named the USS Bill Barr has snuck up on them and is about to ram them at midship.”